Fake
by Lee Isidor
Summary: Drabble - Lavi had to stop and wonder if his whole life was a lie.


**LEE ISIDOR: **HE - FREAKING - LLO, PEOPLE.

**8. **I had a thought occur to me. Since Lavi's backstory is never explained, _what if _all that was behind his eye patch is another green eye without a single problem at all? Huh...

**9. **This is a little depressing. And kind of introspective and a smidgen angsty. And in Lavi's POV. With none of anyone except Lavi and Bookman. Wow. Intense.

**10. **ST will be updated sometime soon. Very soon, I expect. Just btw. c:

**11. **Tell me how I did. For some reason, this turned out very much like my thought process, which makes no sense a lot of the time. So tell me if it's good bad or otherwise. C: Because I would really like to know. I literally spun this off in half an hour, so if there are any typos or mistakes, point them out and I will fix them. :D Thank you very much.

_**Disclaimer**_**: I do not own DGM, nor do I wish to. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other things to do...**

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_"Oh, I'm rather fond of him that way. It shows that deep down he's a __fake__."_

_-Bette Davis

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_

There were times when he felt like everything about him was just one big, projected image.

He could not be open with his emotions – being a future Bookman forbade that. He was not allowed emotional attachments like every other human being involved in a war that may or may not end their lives was. He was not happy about it – but what else could he do? Deciding to quit his Bookman training on a whim was an option he had thought about, toyed with. But it was an option he knew he would never take. He had already come so far, and to back out at that point would only result in more chaos. And that's what his life was – total, utter _chaos_.

He smiled. No matter how much he smiled, there was always more smiling to be done. Everyone liked to see a smile, and his persona, the forty-ninth, _Lavi_, was just one big smile. All smiles, all laughter, all happiness in spite of whatever went on around him. He was always stealing Yuu-chan's hair ties, he was always poking fun at the way Allen ate, he was always gossiping with Lenalee. It wasn't much, but it was life.

He couldn't even begin to remember before his life had started this way. It felt like he had always been moving around. A tragedian – he would pick up a mask, put it over his real face, real personality, and adopt something else. Sometimes it would be logical, sometimes it would be emotional, sometimes it would be ethical – but it was always _something_. It had been so long since he had just been _himself _that he was afraid he was forgetting who he really was.

After all, at the end of the day, all he really was, all he really knew, all he really showed, was that – _fake_.

"Put this on," Bookman had told him gruffly as they stood before the gates of the Black Order. Rather, they were still a ways away from it. The old man had been coaching him into the guise of his newest alias as they had traveled, and he felt so ready, so prepared, to be someone else. In the panda's hands was a black piece of cloth with attached elastic – an eye patch. He had put it on, no worries, no questions, no complaints. He did as he was told.

"Remember who you are, boy," the old man had said, serious as ever. "You grow attached and the consequences will be dire."

"Aw, c'mon," he had replied, locking his hands behind his head and trying to adjust to his new vision of life. Only it wasn't so new – the forty-eight had worn an eye patch too. The panda had told him that it was good to be able to adapt to so many disguises – and what did he need both eyes for anyway? "C'mon, panda, let's just go. I'm so _bored_."

Bookman's eyes had slid sideways, evaluating his persona, his disguise, his everything. "You will not be allowed to neglect your work while you are here," he said gravely. "Just remember that."

"Aye, aye, sir," the redhead had replied with a mock salute, snapping his heels together. "I do nothing so well as you command!"

The old man had sighed, eyes closing for a moment. And for that instant, he had looked so – so very old. It was strange and sad and so human. "Alright, Lavi," he had said, finally, tone empty of all life and emotion. Sometimes he wondered if the old man was a robot.

And that's how it had started – he had put on such a good act that everyone had been fooled. They had all been blinded by his smile, and he knew having shiny, white teeth and dashing good looks had nothing to do with it. But none of them knew – how _could _they know that everything he ever said was just an extension of how fake he was?

"You can take the patch off if it's itching," Bookman said, startling him out of his train of thoughts. "The door is locked."

Lavi sighed, sitting up. He was still in his persona, since Lavi was the only thing he knew, only thing he _could _know, aside from what had already come naturally. The elastic over his forehead was itching terribly, and he was almost surprised he hadn't noticed it earlier. "Thanks, old man."

Removing the eye patch felt strange. He hardly ever did – because the likelihood that someone would walk in and discover that Lavi, the next in line to be Bookman, actually had two working, lively green eyes would be too much. It was a secret that he kept almost as well guarded as his lack of emotion.

Bookman merely grunted a reply, sitting down at the desk to start his daily logs. They logged everything, from the tiniest, insignificant details to the extraordinary. "Have you started your logs?" he asked, fountain pen gliding across the pages. The old man's handwriting was smooth, never a mistake or a correction or a smudge. Flawless. Just like the way the old man was with his emotions; they were always kept to himself, under lock and key, and he had never made a single mistake with feelings or emotions or attachments that Lavi knew of. _Flawless_. Someday he was expected to be like that too.

"I'll get to it eventually, Panda," he muttered, throwing his arm back over his eyes. Looking through both eyes at once was throwing him off balance, and he lay back down on the bed to think.

The other was silent, and the room was quiet except for the scratching of his pen across the paper. They had been with the Black Order for a long time, he mused to himself. The amounts of logs that they had were endless. Of course, Bookman kept them all so neatly organized that if they ever had need of one, it would be a simple task to just pull it out.

"You almost slipped a little out there," Bookman broke the silence with words colder than ice. "I was watching."

"Did not," he argued quietly, know already that it was no use with the old man. "It just reminded me of something."

"Something like what? You need to get it out of your system before I _beat _it out of you, boy," the other said, and Lavi had no doubt that he was serious. Bookman was always serious, even about the most trivial of subjects. Of course, the subject of his own beating was _not _trivial.

Lavi opened his mouth, fully prepared to argue the point. Just as quickly, he snapped his mouth shut. There was no use denying it if the panda had seen. He really _had _been close to slipping out of his persona. The battle on the Arc, the one with Rhode, the one with himself, the one that had left him confused and questioning, had really brought to his attention how fake he was and somehow he was getting a little tired of it.

"I don't like being fake," he said simply after a pause. "But being Lavi, I have to. I was just remembering something from – from the Arc," he added.

"Confusion is part of your life, Lavi," Bookman said, the scratching of his pen not halting in the slightest. "Suppressing emotions is not a normal human occurrence. I have trained you for this – and if you make a mistake now, the Black Order will be nothing but the history of your logs."

"Yes," he sighed. "I know."

"Does that _bother _you?" the old man turned to him with the barest of smiles. He could see through both eyes – after they had adjusted to the light, it was actually so much easier to see with both green eyes.

He tried. He wanted to feel bad, to feel upset about leaving, about _something_ – but the emotion just _wasn't _there. It was pretended, yes, but it wasn't _present_. He just didn't feel like normal people did.

"No," he said finally, honestly. "Not really."

"Good," Bookman answered with conviction. He turned back to the logs, continued scribbling his sentences.

"Gramps?" the redhead spoke again. He was holding his eye patch in front of him with both eyes narrowed. "You think if someone saw this they'd know I was fake?"

Somehow it felt good to say it out loud. He was fake.

The old man's shoulders heaved with a sigh. "Yes."

"Oh."

Fake, huh? There was really nothing else to say.

"Is anything going to make me feel less empty, panda?" Lavi let out a deep breath, covering both eyes with his hands. His uncovered eye felt strange, foreign – _fake_.

"Write your logs before you fall asleep, idiot," Bookman said without real vehemence.

"Yes, _sir_," he sighed, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and scratching his nose. "Don't I get an answer to my question?"

The old man didn't answer, but the heavy silence between them was real, at least.

Real, at least.

Real.

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review. c:


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